Mike Rhoades didn’t sugarcoat what he saw Thursday night. Penn State beat Mercyhurst 72-57 at the Bryce Jordan Center, but the Nittany Lions spent too much of the evening looking flat, and their coach made sure they heard it.
“You want more,” Rhoades said. “You want to see more.
You're demanding more. We had a good shootaround today.
Guys were fired up to play, and then lackluster is the word I use to them after the game.”
That was the story of the night for Penn State, which entered the matchup against KenPom’s 316th-ranked team and still had to claw through a sluggish first half. The Nittany Lions led only 33-29 at the break before eventually pulling away enough to move to 3-1.
The size edge was obvious on paper, and it showed in the numbers to a point. Ivan Jurić kept rolling with his fourth straight double-double to start the season, finishing with 20 points and 15 rebounds.
Penn State also out-rebounded Mercyhurst 39-33. But the Lakers still found ways to hang around, especially when Penn State’s defense failed to contain the ball and didn’t offer enough help once a defender got beat.
Mercyhurst made things uncomfortable early in the second half by scoring eight points in the paint, and guard Hunter Te Ratana was right in the middle of that push. He finished with 10 points. Penn State answered each time with Roko Prkačin, who scored 14 points and kept the Nittany Lions from letting the game slip.
The separation finally came midway through the second half, when Mercyhurst went more than four minutes without scoring. During that stretch, Penn State’s perimeter shots started to drop. Brant Byers and Thomas Allard each connected from deep, giving the Nittany Lions a little breathing room.
Byers finished with 14 points and hit 3 of 5 from 3-point range, while Allard added six points and went 2-for-4 from beyond the arc. Penn State didn’t launch a ton from outside, but it made the most of its chances, finishing 6 of 11 from 3.
“I know I can make shots,” said Byers, who didn’t shoot well before Thursday. “Obviously, they're just not falling at some point.
But me and Thomas and coach [Clay] Conner been getting in every morning to get shots up, even during the season. I knew they were just going to fall at some point.”
Mercyhurst got a team-high 20 points from Jake Lemelman and kept applying pressure, even after Penn State pushed the margin to 58-45 on a 3-pointer from Josh Reed. The Lakers later trimmed it to 63-57 when Lemelman was left open in the corner and buried a three with 2:48 remaining, prompting a timeout from Rhoades.
Penn State steadied itself after that and closed out the win, but the performance left plenty for Rhoades to chew on. Mercyhurst had only eight available players, and Gary Manchel said the late issues came from fatigue.
“I thought the fatigue was down the stretch when we cut it to six, as far as not making the slides in our matchup defense and not feeling to run our sets down the stretch,” Mercyhurst head coach Gary Manchel said. “As far as an effort, I think they left it on the court.”
Rhoades, though, was focused on what his team did and didn’t do.
“We were very lackluster today,” Rhoades said. “We got to fix it.”
Penn State now turns to New Haven on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. back at the Bryce Jordan Center. The Chargers, who play in the NEC, are 1-2 after beating Army on Tuesday.
Guard Roberts Blums missed his third straight game with a broken finger. Rhoades said last week that Blums would be out for a “couple weeks.”
In Other News...
Penn State Faces A Bigger Concern Than One Encouraging Injury Update
Penn State got a useful bit of news on the injury front this week when offensive lineman Malachi Goodman was upgraded to probable for Saturdays game against Minnesota at Beaver Stadium. In a season where availability has mattered as much as anything else, getting another body closer to full strength on the offensive line is the kind of update the Nittany Lions can use, especially with the conference schedule tightening and every snap carrying a little more weight.
Still, the larger concern is the overall shape of the availability report, which leaves wide receiver Koby Howard officially out and puts three defenders Jahmir Joseph, Jeremiah Cooper and Caleb Bacon in the questionable column. Five players are already ruled out, including Howard and four defensive players, so even with Goodman trending in the right direction, Penn State is still staring at a depth test on both sides of the ball heading into a game that could demand clean execution from the first series on. [Read more 🡒]
Penn State Faces Another Nerve-Racking Test Under The Lights
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The predictions from the staff point to a tight, competitive night rather than a runaway, and the player-of-the-game picks reflect how much this one could come down to a single standout performance. For Penn State, the bigger question is whether the Nittany Lions can handle the nerves and turn a tense atmosphere into another controlled finish, or whether Minnesota can make it uncomfortable deep into the game. [Read more 🡒]
Penn State Still Has A Koby Howard Problem It Can't Solve
Koby Howards absence has become one of those quiet issues that keeps hanging around Penn State even as the season moves on. The receiver has now missed six straight games because of injury, and coach Matt Campbell said his recovery is currently paused, leaving the Nittany Lions without a player who had been trending toward a strong season before he went down.
Even with Howard ruled out again for the upcoming game against Minnesota, he has still found a way to stay involved. He has taken on a leadership role off the field, working with younger receivers and trying to help from the sideline while the team waits for clarity on when, or if, he can get back into the mix. [Read more 🡒]